Another networking night, another room full of agents. Still no idea what the person who brings your drink is called.
For an industry that never stops talking about building relationships, real estate professionals have a funny way of going about it. We network relentlessly, and often needlessly. We dress up, head out to microbreweries, and stand around other Realtors talking exclusively about real estate. We attend conferences with Realtors—whoopee! We have lunches with Realtors, and we join exclusive groups with Realtors. We go to award ceremonies to congratulate Realtors for selling lots of real estate while surrounded by other Realtors who also happen to sell real estate.
And then, when the evening finally ends, we walk right past the service staff without ever learning their names.
When I was a kid, Sesame Street used to sing a cheerful song about the people in your neighborhood—the grocer, the doctor, the plumber, the teacher, and Mr. Hooper. The whole point of the lesson was remarkably simple: these are the people you see each day, so maybe you should actually know who they are. Apparently, we needed to be taught this basic concept at four years old, but by the time we hit forty, we have managed to completely forget it.
We have somehow taken the simplest business principle in the world—knowing people—and turned it into an organized, insular activity where we deliberately go somewhere to meet the same people we already know, only to stand around wondering where all the real clients are. Then, inevitably, an email arrives in the inbox pitching a new collective idea: let’s gather all the Realtors on a Zoom meeting, or pay some consultant to lecture everyone on how to build their digital brands. Better yet, slap a cheap quote on a postcard and mail it out, as if a Dollarama trinket qualifies anyone for the human trust needed to secure a million-dollar listing.
Your Brand is at the Corner Store
You can safely skip the expensive, multi-hour seminars on personal branding. Your brand is actually sitting right down the street at the corner store.
What is the owner’s name? Most people do not know, even after patronizing the same local shop for eight years straight. You know precisely where the chips are shelved, which cooler holds the Diet Coke, and that the debit machine occasionally requires two tries to process a card. You have watched the owner’s children grow taller behind the counter over the seasons. And yet, you have no clue what his name is, despite happily calling yourself a "community expert."
This is not an argument to become one of those exhausting individuals who weaponizes every human interaction into an aggressive sales pitch. Nobody wants to be trapped at a gas station pump while someone hands over a business card and explains that it is "always a great time to talk real estate." Please, for the collective sanity of everyone involved, do not do that.
Instead, the solution is something far more radical, yet disarmingly simple: just introduce yourself.
Over years of engaging with everyday people, you realize how quickly preconceived notions dissolve through a basic conversation. A local acquaintance might turn out to be someone who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel—a completely true story—or someone who makes a living allowing venomous creatures to bite them for medical research. You cannot possibly meet enough unusual characters to know anything about anyone without actually starting a dialogue.
That individual working behind the counter at the local convenience store might own multiple properties and local franchises. The woman pouring your morning coffee might own a quiet cottage out of town. The crossing guard could be an experienced real estate investor who has quietly built a portfolio over two decades. Your local mechanic’s partner might be actively searching for a new home. Or, quite simply, none of them might need anything from you at all. And that outcome is entirely acceptable.
Recognizing Isn’t Knowing
There is a distinct possibility that modern networking seminars have stripped away our natural curiosity. We have become remarkably adept at not knowing people. We recognize faces, we quickly qualify individuals, we pigeonhole strangers, and we even judge other human beings for the silliest reasons. But recognition is vastly different from actual acquaintance.
Consider the garbage collector. That man has been visiting your property once a week for nine years, translating to roughly 450 visits. Your own extended family likely hasn’t put up attendance numbers like that. Yet how many homeowners wave, let alone stop to say hello? Offering a holiday treat or a casual greeting to a sanitation worker transforms a faceless civic service into a human connection. His name might be Rico, and acknowledging his presence requires no legal obligation to invite him over for Christmas dinner.
The grocery store provides perhaps the most amusing daily theater of missed human connection. People stand in long checkout lines surrounded by neighbors who live just houses away, staring intently down at glowing mobile screens, only to return home later to read social media feeds lamenting modern loneliness. Have you ever noticed someone struggling with a heavy shopping cart? Stepping in to take it for them, offering a casual remark, or letting them keep the quarter is often the entire move.
You do not need a QR code, a digital sign-up sheet, or an exchange of professional profiles. They might say thanks, or you might share a brief, silly joke, or you might discover you both grew up in the same hometown. You will likely never see them again, and civilization will survive either way. But every once in a while, something unexpected happens: you meet someone who knows someone else, holds a fascinating perspective, runs an unnoticed local business, disagrees with your worldview, or eventually becomes a lifelong friend.
Your Neighborhood Isn’t the Houses
We spend thousands of marketing dollars trying to manufacture digital "touchpoints" with strangers while completely ignoring the people we physically cross paths with every single day. Then, we spend even more money trying to figure out why modern professional life feels isolating or why genuine business connections are so hard to secure. The irony is magnificent.
This dynamic ultimately transcends the real estate industry; it reflects a broader, self-involved cultural shift. People walk through their own neighborhoods as though everyone else is merely part of the background scenery—the house, the store, the restaurant, the gas station, and the anonymous person working behind the counter. But those are not props; they are people whose names have simply been ignored.
Sesame Street mapped out this fundamental truth more than half a century ago. A neighborhood is not defined by the physical structures of the houses lined up along a street. It is defined entirely by the people who inhabit it. Somewhere along the way, modern society became too sophisticated for its own good, forgetting a simple concept delivered by generations past.
Before committing another evening to standing in a rented room drinking wine with people who share the exact same profession, it might be worthwhile to simply find out the names of the staff pouring the drinks. Not for the sake of prospecting, not to develop a transactional lead, and not to sell anything—just because it is fundamentally nice to know someone you didn’t know before.